Archive for March, 2011

Here’s my guilty secret – I watch Coronation Street. Ever since the tram crash, I have been reeled right in. I’m not about to defend my viewing though – you can judge me whatever way you want to on that issue. I am, however, going to share an element of discomfort I have with a storyline at the moment and ask you what you think.

Here’s the synopsis:

Pretty, blonde Maria lands herself a job as PA to the (female) boss of the knicker-factory. A potential client – Frank – comes along with what could be a huge order vital to the continued existence of the factory. He’d like to view samples later that night in the comfort of his own home. Carla – the boss – despatches Maria to town to have her hair and nails done and to buy herself a new frock for the meeting. Maria buys a black frock and was gorgeous and glammed when she arrived at Frank’s house. I have no issue with what she did or didn’t wear. Personally, I don’t think it was appropriate for a business meeting – but I would defend Maria’s right to wear whatever she likes wherever she likes.

They had dinner, they had wine, they had chats, then Maria hoped they’d get down to business and Frank would sign the contracts she had brought with her. Frank hoped to get down to business of another kind. He had the hots for Maria and clearly wanted to play hide the sausage. Maria, for her part, had told Frank that she wasn’t interested and that she had a boyfriend. He didn’t seem too keen to no for an answer, though. We saw Frank and Maria on the sofa, Frank kissing Maria when clearly she didn’t want him to and we saw Frank’s hand on Maria’s thigh. Maria pushed Frank off her and legged it out of the house.

Clearly, if this had not taken place in Soapland, it would not have been a pleasant experience for the woman involved. In this scenario, Frank was out of line. I have no issue with that, but I am puzzled by Maria’s insistence that Frank ‘tried to rape’ her. Because I don’t think he did. I think he assaulted her, I am pretty sure he scared her, I’m fairly convinced she was shocked and shaken; I would suspect that he was using his substantial leverage – the possibility of giving work to the factory – to entice or persuade Maria to have sex with him. I am sure that Frank’s actions constituted an assault, but I don’t, however, think he tried to rape her.

Maybe if Maria hadn’t managed to escape when she did, Frank would have raped her – but who can say for sure?

Am I missing something? Or should Maria revise her statement and stop telling people that Frank tried to rape her?

Like the vast majority of people in this country, I was born into a Catholic family and was brought up as a Catholic. However, as I have not considered myself a Catholic for many years, and putting down “liberal agnostic who sometimes attends services at the Unitarian church” doesn’t seem quite right, I’m going for “no religion” on the census form next month. In a country that still essentially uses baptismal records as an excuse for not providing totally secular, non-denominational education, I think it’s important that those of us with no formal religious belief or none at all make our voices heard.

However, according to Brian Whiteside of the Humanist Association, some census enumerators are actively discouraging this. In yesterday’s Irish Times, he wrote that:

on the question of religion the enumerators have been instructed to guide people to fill in the form to reflect their background rather than their current position. How does this help us plan for Ireland’s future?

How indeed? If this is true (and anecdotal evidence in the comments to the column suggests that it is), then the CSO are actively encouraging people to give them an inaccurate picture of religious practice in this country, and it’s nothing short of a disgrace. As Whiteside says,

imagine a survey on car ownership. The question “Do you have a car?” is not asked; the survey goes straight to “What type of car do you have?” And then, someone who has no car is encouraged to say they have a Morris Minor because, way back, it was the traditional family car.

What do you think? Have you encountered CSO staff giving such advice? And if they want our religious background, how far back do they want us to go? Parents? Great-grandparents? Prehistoric ancestors? Maybe we should all go for “sun-worshiper”….

Yes, we’re all being told to make do and mend and embrace craftiness. But actually, making stuff yourself often isn’t cheap. So let’s hear it for Regina de Búrca, who offers a guide to being crafty on a budget.

I come from a long line of women who knit, sew and crochet. My forebears’ sole purpose of making things was to saving money. My grandmother’s Aran jumpers were undoubtedly beautiful yet their main function was a practical one, while my mother was a prolific dressmaker who made everything from our ‘good room’ curtains to my Communion dress. She taught me how to sew so that I could make clothes and repair them. But by the time I grew up, culture had turned disposable and the importance of skills she taught me had dwindled.

In the past, craft was often a necessity, not a hobby.

It wasn’t until my grandmother’s death in 2002 that I became interested in craft work. When we had the heart-breaking task of packing away her things, I was reminded of the significant role crafting had played in her life. We found her ‘work box’ – a hand-decorated box containing a wealth of supplies, neatly stored away with a half-finished jumper and blanket. I decided I couldn’t let her legacy go to waste and so I took them all home with me.

My grandmother’s forte was crocheting; something I’d had little experience of. When I went online to find resources to teach myself properly, I discovered that the world of handicraft had changed dramatically. Once an old-fashioned, staid pursuit, the art of crafting had become subverted; reclaimed by a dynamic, sassy generation who wanted to make things for the fun of it and had set up initiatives such as the ‘Stitch and Bitch’ groups.

I have been making things ever since then. But my approach to my hobby has changed over the years. At first it was simply a relaxing and rewarding way to spend my time. But as my salary has decreased and my expenses have gone up, I couldn’t justify spending more on say, making a jumper, than it would cost to buy one, so I gave up crafting as an overindulgent hobby.

However, it wasn’t long before I missed it. The last time I moved house, I happened upon my grandmother’s work box. I thought back to the times when making things was a good way to save money, so I became determined to find a way that I could save cash while doing something I loved so much.

It has been challenging – there will always be cheaper alternatives to homemade clothes and accessories. It is impossible to compete with mass-manufactured low-price products. But what I have found is that the items I make myself endure longer than many budget items I have purchased, so in the long term they can work out cheaper.
Here are my top resources for craft supplies on a budget. Some are online, others based in Dublin. I would be very interested to hear of any other budget retailers that I don’t know about, particularly around the rest of the country!

Wool

My first port of call for wool is always The Liberties Market in Dublin 8. It is the cheapest place I have found in the City, and the best choice when looking for wool for a pattern that requires a lot of the stuff.

The ‘special offers’ section of the Spring Wools website is a treasure trove of unusual wool and knitting kits. They deliver quickly, too!

Etsy’s knitting supplies section is useful. it’s the most economical place I’ve found for specialist wool, I’ve found some really unique types here in the past.

I keep an eye on Aldi’s and Lidl’s special offers – they often sell bags of wool.

Charity shops can sometimes stock it – a friend of mine once bought five balls of mohair wool for two euro in a charity shop on Capel Street! Granted, I’ve scoured all the charity shops in the area to find a similar deal but haven’t… yet.

Fabric

The fabric wholesalers, TWI in Dublin’s Mountjoy Square is the most budget-friendly walk-in fabric shop I’ve found – . It sells an amazing range of fabrics.

http://www.fabrics-n-stuff.co.uk/ is the cheapest online fabric retailer I’ve used. The service is fast and the shipping costs not too painful, so needless to say, I’m a regular. Their range isn’t as extensive as most online sites, so often I enhance the fabric myself using batik techniques or sewing on collars or feature pieces (see vintage market in the ‘Other’ section, below).

The clearance page on Fabrics.com has some great deals. It has the best range of budget fabric that I’ve found online, so that excuses the postage costs… just.

The ‘Online Fabrics’ special offer page has some good deals – but with £10.99 postage costs regardless of weight of the package, I only use it for a big order no more than once a year. Don’t forget to request samples – they are 75p each for a fat quarter. Each customer gets a maximum of ten samples.

Best way to stock up on low cost fabric is to ask any backpackers you know who are jetting off – they can pick up stunning pieces in places like Morocco or India very cheaply.

Patterns

My all-time favourite craft site is at Craftown. From patterns to easy to follow illustrated guides, the website is a fantastic resource for all other types of crafting.

The member-only http://www.freepatterns.com/ is a wonderful site. Once you sign up (for free) you can download their patterns in PDF format. They also have a e-newsletter service, which provides interesting tips on various kinds of craft work.

The All Free Crafts site is an amazing compendium of patterns. And with no login to set up, it’s very accessible.

Other

K & M Evans sells supplies for teachers and sells a huge variety of paper and paint and lots of other crafting tools, for much cheaper than high street art shops

Vintage markets are great places to pick up buttons, collars and other pieces of fabric that can be repurposed. I keep track of the fairs in Dublin through Vintage Ireland’s Facebook page.

Aldi and Lidl sell the cheapest sewing machines I’ve found. I got mine in Aldi a couple of years ago for 70 euro.

Freecycle is a great place to find crafting staples such as sewing machines and dressmakers’ dummies.

DIY stores can be the cheapest places to find glue, wire and paints.

One of the main ways I save on my craft budget is by pooling resources with my friends. By sharing things like sewing machines, Lomography cameras, tile cutters (for mosaics) and bookbinding tools, we have access to far more supplies than we would normally. And it follows that we all have a shared knowledge base, so we save on tuition fees as well.

Handicraft in itself has added value because it can be so fulfilling -there is something very satisfying about making your own things. It brings me joy look at what I have made over the years, in particular the jumpers and blankets co-crocheted by my grandmother and I. I hope it’s a tradition that will be kept up through this generation and future ones.

Regina de Búrca hails from the West of Ireland. She has been a Liverpool FC fan since the age of four. She writes books for teenagers and has a MA in writing for Young People from Bath Spa University. She currently lives in Dublin. Twitter: @Regina_dB

Polystyrene was just a teenager when she became the singer in punk band X-Ray Spex. In 1977, they released their classic single ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours!’ and played on the same bill as bands like The Buzzcocks and Wire. After struggles with her mental health, Poly opted out of music. She has spent the last two decades writing, occasionally resurrecting X-Ray Spex for reunions and finding solace in her Hare Krishna faith. She has just released a new solo album, Generation Indigo, produced by Youth, which features guest appearances from her sister, her daughter Celeste and Viv Albertine of The Slits. Watch the video for her latest single, ‘Virtual Boyfriend’.

EDIT: April 26th, the Anti Room are very sad to hear the news of Poly Styrene’s death. She was an important figure in 1970s punk and an inspiration many women in music. RIP Poly.

Yes. These are seriously good. I’m a firm believer in dessert before/instead of dinner, not to mention the use of food to butter somebody up. Now if you make these you shall be in the good books for at least weeks if not months…

In the mood I was in on one glorious Friday, I was craving something between some kind of brownie, some kind of fudgy chocolate cake. I was discussing this (a common topic) with some of the girls in the tutorial room when everyone seemed to simultaneously come up with ‘lava cakes’, or ‘melty yummy chocolate things’ if one were to go by my original thought. And would you know it, Nigella had a recipe for them and I had the recipe in my grasp! I may have added a wee biteen more sugar, which I think stood to it. I’ve had these in some restaurants and it’s just not actually sweet enough, so I didn’t take that chance.

The chocolate: I used a mixture of a 60% and also a 73.5% gorgeous Claudio Corallo chocolate that I’ve been meaning to use for ages. It has cocoa nibs in it and is just delicious.

Ingredients: (this makes six – maybe double the recipe)

12 oz chocolate – see above!

70g butter

180g castor sugar

4 eggs, beaten

Wee pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

50g flour

6 custard/pudding tins – the wee ones. I also used some ramekins but the custard tins worked better!

Baking non stick paper

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees, and put in a plain tray.

Trace and cut out little circles for the bottom of the tins. Butter them, pop in the parchment, and butter a wee bit more! You don’t want these little gems to stick.

Melt the chocolate in a heat-proof bowl over simmering water and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar.

Gradually beat in the eggs bit by bit along with the salt and vanilla. Add the flour and combine until it’s all mixed in.

Add in the cooled (ish) chocolate and beat it until it’s a nice smooth batter and divide evenly between the six tins.

Take your heated tray out of the oven and pop the tins onto it. Return to the oven for 10-12 minutes.

When done, gently remove, turn upside down onto your plate and gently tap the top. It should slide out pretty easily.

Give it a dusting of icing sugar and watch this happen…

Sarah Nicholson is a medical student who, when not staring at medical books that weigh more than a small child, tends to wander around the kitchen spilling flour and devouring chocolate at a rate that could challenge Usain Bolt. Has a penchant for polka dots and puppies. Also runs the monthly Irish Foodies Cookalongs. Find her at Cake in the Country or at @cakeinthcountry on Twitter.

I didn’t take up drinking tea until very late in life – my twenties, as it happens.

Yes, I know that one’s twenties don’t exactly qualify as autumn years, but so engrained is the concept of The Tay in Ireland, not supping of a cuppa until you’ve moved out from home is as alien as growing feet on your ears. I taught myself to like tea because I was sick of various mammies dropping the pot in terror when I refused a splash. Whole armies of Missus Doyles stood against me. I couldn’t beat them. Not with reason, not with stroppiness, not with grandiose fabrications of horrible allergies; it was easier just to temper my tastebuds and get on with it.

Well, to an extent anyway. I drink my tea black without sugar, which wrecks their heads to an degree I’m placated by.

I began drinking tea. A little after that, I stopped eating meat. And the whole frantic rìrà began anew.

“You don’t eat meat? You … wha’? I don’t understand. How can you not eat meat? What do you eat instead?”

It started, as most things do, with my mother, who was amazed and appalled in equal measure, as if I’d suddenly become able to peel my face off at will. “Would you not have a bit of ham?” she would offer, as ham is, in her mind, not Real Meat and therefore perfectly acceptable fare for vegetarians. And in a sense, she has a point. Commercial ham slices are mostly salted water mixed with márla.

“I won’t have a bit of ham, no.”

“Chicken?”

“No, Mam. Vegetarians don’t eat chicken.”

“Mary Flaherty’s daughter eats chicken and she’s a vegetarian.”

“She’s not a vegetarian, Mam; she’s just health-conscious.”

“Jaysus. Well, what will I feed you?” And she’d stand in the middle of her kitchen, arms and eyes to heaven, hoping for divine intervention to recondition her unconventional spawn, praying for a celestial cow to fall into my gullet.

In the end she got used to the idea, and now, whenever I travel home to see her, she heats up two frozen veggie burgers and sticks them in the middle of a big white plate for me. Small mercies, dear reader. Baby steps.

It’s not just my mammy, who’s so set in her ways you could use her as a mathematical constant. Vegetarianism is not an uncommon lifestyle choice, but it still provokes some befuddling reactions here in Ireland. Let’s face it, this is a country where you were always expected to eat-that-up-it’s-good-for-you and thank the Lawrd above that you weren’t a starving child in Africa who’d have been only too delighted to finish that cabbage. We come from a long line of putter-ups or shutter-ups. The Celtic Tiger, and foreign holidays, and the influx of English bohemians who gave our comely maidens funny ideas about animal rights and breastfeeding – sure what else could you blame for this generation of Irish who have particular tastes and strong notions?

It’s not as if I’m a raw food fanatic, or fruitarian, or even a plain ole’ vegan. I just don’t eat dead things. I don’t give a (living, breathing) monkey who else eats meat. I don’t. That’s all.

“Do you eat fish?” is the most common question I’m asked.

“Nope.”

“But fish aren’t animals!”

“They are.”

“Fish have no memories,” I’m informed.

“Evidence suggests that they do,” I reply. “And anyway, I know plenty of people with terrible memories and I don’t go about attacking them with chilli sauce and cutlery.”

“Are you one of those mad people that won’t eat eggs?”

“I love eggs.”

“Well, I suppose that’s ok so,” they say, backing away slowly.

None of this is because vegetarians are considered dangerously insane, mind. I firmly believe that such bewildered reactions to my diet come from our hospitable culture – you wouldn’t have visitors to your house without offering them refreshment, and it’s a pain in your homely bosom if your visitors have unpredictable attitude towards dead pigs. Worse if you’ve got a veggie coming to dinner; what on earth can they eat, if not steak/chops/chicken/salmon? You cannot leave a guest hungry at an Irish table. It would be mortifying.

There’s also an attitude, not confined to Ireland, that vegetarians are prissy, overly-principled, preachy and awkward. All of which apply to me on a general basis, but my vegetarianism genuinely isn’t something I prop my chin up on. I’m really easy to please. Just give me spuds and salt. Job done.

The lack of understanding what a vegetarian is, as opposed to having to understand their motivations, is what flummoxes me. Vegetarians don’t eat dead animals. Dead animals are what meat’s cut from, so no meat. The most complicated thing is cheese, and in fairness, I do understand that many carnivores won’t be aware that some cheese isn’t vegetarian – I don’t understand why Irish restaurants don’t know this, though. Surely chefs know the difference between vegetarian rennet and animal rennet? The amount of veggie dishes in Irish restaurants liberally and lovingly sprinkled with parmesan really confounds me – parmesan is made to a traditional recipe which includes calf rennet – but then again, I recently bought Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals (I’m the only veggie in my house) and the majority of his “vegetarian” recipes had more parmesan in than a waddling procession of overfed Italians. If Jamie Oliver, the world’s most famous chef, doesn’t know what parmesan is, then I can’t really blame the local beee-strow.

In the meantime, I’ve resigned myself to sticking to coffee in McDonalds and nibbling my fingernails at catered events. Oh, and surviving on the occasional, lonely veggie burger when at the homestead. One day, we’ll get the hang of these alternative lifestyles.

The Eagle, based on The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff, hits Irish cinemas this weekend – I’m counting the days. Every time I see those toilet brush helmets my heart gives a little flutter. It’s not the sight of Russell Crowe wielding a gladius or the cast of the TV series of Spartacus wielding a lot more that has me this way, this is an obsession with much older roots. When it comes to all things Roman, I’m a total groupie. It might have something to do with growing up in London and being told that if you dug down far enough you could find the layer of ash from when Boudicca burned Londinium to the ground. It might have been the crumbling romanticism of the grassy piles of stones called Caesar’s Camp near where I grew up in Wimbledon. But if I’m honest, I was too much of a bookish kid to root my obsessions so much in the fresh air. This one has a lot more to do with a wonderfully dotty Latin teacher and the Cambridge Latin series of text books.

My school before I left England was the kind of place they used to make Ealing Comedies about back in the day. We celebrated the school’s birthday every year with lime green, sickly sweet cake, there was a school song as well as a school hymn and a glass case at the end of the first floor gallery had its tiny compartments filled with the tourist tat of an Edwardian past pupil who’d taken the Grand Tour of the Holy Land – piece of the True Cross – check, stone from the island where Jason and his Argonauts stopped off – check. Around this same wood panelled gallery hung heavy black boards with the names of those who had left with flying honours to a glittering Oxbridge education. It was a minor public day school, stuck in amber and tradition, smelling of chalk dust and furniture polish.

Miss Bickersteth was one of those traditions. If she had been a character in one of those Ealing films, Joyce Grenfell would have been a shoo-in for the part. By the time my class came to her we were primed with stories from older siblings, mothers, aunts. Her legendary status crossed generations. She was a slight, wiry woman with greying hair sculpted in Art Deco pin curls. Every class she would stride in, in her tweed pencil skirt and sensible brogues and stand behind the teacher’s desk, almost crackling with enthusiastic energy. She had a passion for a dead language that was ridiculously infectious and she was one of those rare teachers that everyone loved. No matter what we threw at her (even if our ideas of playing up in class were embarrassingly lame) she would take in her stride. When we decided to play dumb she followed suit and then threatened us with a test, when she arrived in class to find all the desks and chairs upside down she ignored them and made us sit on the floor. The woman was unruffleable – except on one occasion I can remember.

Now, I know that Latin isn’t generally seen as one of the sexiest subjects on the school curriculum, but you never heard one of Miss Bickersteth’s classes on life in ancient Rome. We learnt that doctors would use spiders webs to coagulate the blood in an open wound and, on one memorable occasion, how prostitutes used to ply their wares under the bridges of the Tiber. I think we were mistaken for the Upper Fifth, because half way through the description her hand flew to her mouth and she actually blushed. It took us several minutes to convince her that we had heard worse, before her embarrassment would subside. We had heard worse though. On Miss Bickersteth’s recommendation the whole class had been avidly tuning in to the BBC adaptation of I, Claudius, currently getting a second airing at 9 o’ clock on a school night. For kids raised on a diet of Enid Blyton and Adrian Mole the sex, madness and political intrigue of Robert Graves’ classic novels were intoxicating indeed. It was in I, Claudius I saw my first sword’s-eye view of a beheading (which still makes me rather queasy to watch) and we were all shaken by John Hurt’s crazed performance as a Caligula who ate the baby he had ripped from his sister’s womb in the hope it should sprout from his head as Aphrodite. Then there was Livia – the Joan Crawford of toga-ed divas – poisoning her way through her nearest and dearest.

Miss Bickersteth’s Latin classes had a Brother’s Grimm knack of showing us that life could be a dark, bloody affair. There was nothing dry or dusty about them, even if the verb conjugations formed an academic litany reaching back to Tom Brown’s Schooldays and beyond. But gifted and all as Miss Bickersteth was as a teacher, we wouldn’t have had that description of medicinal cobwebs without the Cambridge series of Latin text books. There aren’t many school books, with the possible exception of Soundings here in Ireland, that have wormed their way so into the psyche of those who studied them that they have their echoes in some of the most popular of popular culture. Like Soundings the Cambridge books worked because they had great content. Instead of pages of exercises and verb conjugations (worthy of repetition – they figure a LOT in Latin classes), these text books told a story. Book 1 was set in Pompeii. You knew from the beginning the ending was going to be harsh, with explosions. We were shown videos of the sad, frozen, ash-covered bodies, seen the all too visible silent screams frozen in their last moment of fear. We knew that the family going through day-to-day life with the express purpose of introducing us to the next stage of vocabulary were destined for a fiery end. Prosperous banker Caecilius, his lady-who-lunches wife Metella and their grown up and rather hunky, in a way that can only be captured by black and white stylised illustrations, son Quintus. By the time we got to the final chapter and laboriously translated the initial rumblings of Vesuvius, even Miss Bickersteth was rather sombre.

We had read about Caecilius getting anxious about a swan being slowly roasted to entertain a business associate or irritating his wife with the purchase of a particularly comely female slave. Now his final hours had come we all read the last instalments together. It came as rather a shock when, researching this post I visited the Cambridge website . The books are as I remember, although the green covers I remember have been long since revamped. Quintus now doesn’t look half as hunky as I seem to remember but I discovered, when I read that final chapter again, that I can still read the Latin after all this time. The chapter must have left one hell of an impression! Reading it again after all those years I’m amazed at how strong it still is. Read it yourself if you’re interested – it’s here. But I warn you – it’s poignant stuff – Caecilius gets hit by falling masonry and the family dog, Cerberus, also succumbs.

Actually I’m obviously not the only one scarred for life by that final chapter of first year Latin. Reminiscing recently with a fellow alumni of those slim green books Caecilius and his family are cemented in the adolescent brain. They even pop up in the Dr Who episode The Fires of Pompeii. A scriptwriter perhaps keen to exorcise a haunting image has given Caecilius a new start with the ever faithful Metella and Quintus, who will now not have to face the British weather in Book 2 with the irascible but memorably named local big wig Cogidubnus.

These days my Latin might be rusty but I’ll still be booking my tickets to soak up the Romano-British action. Ancient Rome was the first thing I was ever a geek about and for that I’m forever thankful to Miss Bickersteth and Caecilius et al.